Matt Whelan Travels

When Xhosa boys of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province return from a man-making month of isolation in the bush, goats must be sacrificed, and it would be my honour, so they said, to assist with one of the killings.
I ask if this is absolutely necessary.
“Yes,” I’m told. “Absolutely.”
The goat shows no sign of alarm as we take him from the field, lead him up to a small clearing beside one of the mud huts and remains unperturbed as we hold him to the ground, one man to each hoof.
But then he sees the knife, and begins to kick violently before one of the men draws the blade across the throat, letting out a thick flow of blood before the body goes limp, the eyes vacant.
Wafts of steam escape from the innards as the hide is cut along the inside of each leg and up the center of the belly before being peeled away in one complete rug. As the anatomy opens up, one man, wearing jeans and a leather jacket—which seems strange attire for such an ancient rite—emerges as the lead surgeon, and announces the different organs aloud in English, with a thick and lilting African accent: “This is tha…leeever…These are tha…keeednays,” before slicing them out with an old penknife and handing them off to any one of the dozen or so children ferrying goat fare from carcass to kitchen.
One of the organs is identified as the gall bladder. The man next to me squeezes a small amount of dark green liquid from the gland before bringing it to his lips and sucking it into his mouth. He coughs and gags in the manner of one who has just taken a large shot of strong liquor, then beams as he offers it to me, with sufficient pride and zeal that I cannot refuse.
The taste of fresh goat bile is almost as difficult to describe as it is to experience. I’m not sure if a blend of battery acid and fermented onions might produce the closest imitation, or if a cocktail of spoiled cabbage and rat feces would more closely relate its foulness. Either way, it’s surely worse.
‘Very good,’ I say, after my own poisoned spasm, before passing the galling organ to the next lucky man in line.